Présentation

Ce carnet a pour objectif la diffusion et la mise en valeur de l'ensemble des communications enregistrées lors du colloque international "Femmes et genre en contexte colonial, XIXe-XXe siècles" qui s'est tenu à Paris du 19 au 21 janvier 2012.
The aim of this page is to make available and give visibility to all the talks given during the international conference "Women and Gender in Colonial Contexts (19th-20th centuries)", which was held in Paris from the 19th to the 21st of January 2012.

Beyond the “civilising mission” female European agendas in the Middle East in the nineteenth century

Much useful insight into the gendered operations of colonialism has emerged from the study of women’s involvement as missionaries, teachers, reformers, and health specialists in colonial settings, and from wider cultural analyses of links between gendered ideas of domesticity and moral improvement and colonial agendas. However this reading of colonial histories also raises conceptual and ideological challenges. Does it confirm rather than critique conventional nineteenth century assumptions about “woman’s mission”, thereby marginalising or obscuring other aspects of women’s involvement in colonial settings? Does it ignore European women’s use of colonial space and colonial privilege to resist dominant gender conventions? Does it allow historians to explore tensions or inconsistencies within the gendered practices of colonial governance, culture and ideology? This paper will explore these questions through a comparative analysis of texts produced by a number of French and English women involved in Egypt between the 1850s and the 1920s when European involvement there moved from commercial, cultural and diplomatic contact to the consolidation of colonial occupation. It will examine their interests in travel, archaeology, and local custom as well as their interests in anti-slavery, education, and health care, and suggest that “civilising” and moral agendas could co-habit with an appetite for the exotic, and with ambitions to establish “expert” or “insider” knowledge, or personal agency. It will consider whether in addition to ‘improving’ or “interpreting” colonial subjects, women’s agendas might include desires for pleasure and power, which fit neither nineteenth century expectations, nor some of the assumptions in the historiography of gender and empire. This discussion will thereby contribute to a sharper and more nuanced understanding of the conflicted character of European women’s involvement in colonialism in the Middle East.